


Shadows Call

by Guacharo



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, I promise, M/M, Magical Realism, Mentions of Death, Mythology - Freeform, author is a messy bitch who loves drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:46:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guacharo/pseuds/Guacharo
Summary: Elio loses something important





	Shadows Call

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for picking up this garbage, just a warning that there's gonna be some weird fantastical shit going on through this story where there is magic in the mundane. Hope you enjoy.

There was a knot at the base of his throat the refused to follow his stomach on its way down. If he had any pride, he would choke while swallowing it.

 

He wanted to rage against the birth of the dawn, rebel from its warmth. There could be other loves, right? Other mouths to draw kisses from, other arms to wrap around his birdcage of a torso.

 

**Engaged**.

 

It wasn’t for sure yet, it was temporary, it wasn’t quite loss...not yet.

 

Elio wished Oliver the ripest fruit, the kindest eyes, and the softest smiles.

 

Two weeks past the phone call. Two weeks past the end of the world.

 

He’d kept the note between the pages of an Atlas as if daring it to live up to its namesake for Elio had entrusted it with his whole world.

 

_Grow up. Meet me at midnight._

 

In another life perhaps Oliver would have chosen Elio, they would foster many graduate students together and drink all the aprocot juice in the world. But the funny thing about life is: it goes on whether we want it to or not.

 

Yet sometimes, some very rare times, humans in all their fragility will grow hearts of pale gold and demand their comeuppenance for fate is written, not carved in stone.

 

* * *

 

 

“Elio, picino, look at me.”

 

The boy in question turned his face to his mother’s large worried eyes. She cupped his cheeks searching for answers, sliding them down to grip at his shoulders as if that would hold him in time, stationary and avoidant of her fears. His brow furrowed but relented, seeing the blood slowly drain from her face.

 

“Mom, what--”

 

“Oh Elio!”

 

Annella pulled him into her breast as if to shelter him from whatever horrors her lips would not tell, flashbacks to a time just before the summer house came to bear her name in blue or black ink. 

 

“Mom! What’s going on?”

 

He gently pushed her away, eyes widening at the moisture found in the corner of his mother’s eyes. Her thumbs followed his gaze, surprised that her tear ducts had somehow decided to soothe the passage of time, deciding to hint at a fate not yet entirely understood but inevitable all the same. 

 

“Mom?”

 

“It’s not there. I’d thought perhaps you’d have more time or it was some trick of the light but no, this is no trick.”

 

“What is? Please talk to me Mama!”

 

“Your shadow, it’s gone.”

 

“B-but that can’t be!”

 

This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be! Elio was just 17, not even old enough for a quarter life crisis let alone the loss of a shadow. Children’s shadows were almost always stretched far and wide, indicative of a long life while the elderly had dimunutive tiny shadows the size of a household cat. It was said that when the whispers of death approached, all that remained of a shadow was a fly-sized speck of significance before the afterthought of a flame extinguished itself. The sun and aspects of the day could reflect the roads of one’s life, flickering alive at daybreak, crouching at night, but to have no footing in the land of the living, to be a shell was to have no shadow. 

 

    Elio’s life had left him and now it would only be a matter of time before his body would follow. It had always been so. They called it the announced death, imploring the lucky few who were blessed with it an adequate warning to put their affairs together before the inevitable. At least, that’s what they said, the stories that became legend that became truth, that which dealt in absolutes. His father hated absolutes, calling the yellowed pages of literary journals fascist when the empty faces behind them left no room for suggestion. 

 

_ The arrogance of it all!  _ He sould softly whisper with the force of a gale wind.

 

And Oliver. He needed to talk to Oliver again, but not like this, never like this. In America they didn’t really care about shadows, just saw them the same way they’d see a plastic bag in the wind or a pebble on the beach, something to ignore and speak nothing of, no matter how small said shadow had become. If Elio had to take a guess, he’d sum it up to the uncanny American ability to keep looking forward, never back which is why the state kept getting involved in wars all the time. But there was a contradiction there too, they only looked back for the unimportant things like who should get married or to punish disobedient children who wouldn’t study finance. But who was Elio, who knew nothing of the things that mattered, to judge? 

 

His parents left him to his grief as he left them to theirs, Annella clutching at Samuel who had walked in on the scene of mother crying over son. **שכול** , that’s what they call it in Israel.

 

Elio...Elio, Elio, Elio.

 

If Elio were not to be Elio called but rather lot 23, would Oliver grieve him? Would he remember the days filled with sunshine, those moments caught between light and their shadows when their bodies were all that existed? 

 

Maybe in America they would be old wives’ tales, maybe Oliver wouldn’t even notice the lack of shadow like a loyal pet from childhood that grows pixelated the older one becomes. Perhaps he’d think Elio a ghost, like he’d imagined him one night after too much dancing, after disturbing his peace. 

 

“Elly-Belly?”

 

He said nothing.

 

“I’m going to sit beside you, is that okay?”

 

Nod.

 

Samuel grunted his decent. 

 

“Looks like you’ve misplaced your shadow, huh? Should’ve bought a bicycle lock or something, but most people don’t get to have this luck.”

 

“Most people don’t lose their shadow.”

 

Samuel chuckled, and aquiesced, not quite looking at Elio directly, opting to scan around to music tapes, sheet music, and assorted pieces of paper before finally lingering on an old stick figure drawing hung on the wall two lifetimes ago. 

 

“You have an opportunity here to get your affairs in order, to make peace with yourself. We love you, never forget that, but have considered telling Oliver? You two really had something special and if you want to see him one last time, we understand, we always will. Have your ecstacy and your tragedy, it’s up to you, but don’t stop living for our sake. Be happy, be loved. You say his name in sleep still, like you’re dreaming backwards. It’s up to you, but if you want to go to New York and try your luck, we won’t be mad. Just know it would be a waste of your limited forever to spend it having a staring competition with the abyss.”

 

He ran his hand through Elio’s curls. The stick figures mocked him, smiles large and yellow. He wished they had Hepatitis. His beautiful boy, his angel without a shadow, his missing soul. It would be like practice, maybe the empty room would feel less haunted without the living dead inside it. After all, it would be better to awaken to the sounds of a phone call an ocean away than to wails coming from upstairs. 

 

For the first time since childhood, Elio slept between his parents, their shadows blanketing him as if trying to coax a seed that refused to grow. That night, an awful wind shook the house, marking its shuddering grief, banging at the windows, except for one fixure: an empty bed embossed in yellow sheets refused to creak or groan. It was newer, younger, more optimistic than the desks and dining chairs and would wait until the day her two boys would return, as one does. 

 

The next day, Elio boarded a train, and left to find his fortune. 

 

Somewhere in New York, New York, a woman praised every gd she knew. From the porcelain gd just behind her in the bathroom, to the most ancient ones in books her fiance bored her with. 

 

“Finally,” she thought, “some fucking good news.”

  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> How was it my dudes? Expect longer chapters in the future.


End file.
